An air conditioner is provided with a compressor, which is driven by a motor functioning as a driving source. The motor drives the load by being supplied with AC power from a power converter device.
As disclosed in Patent Document 1, for example, a known power converter device is generally comprised of a rectifier section, a boost power factor correction section, and an inverter power converter section as its main components. First of all, an AC commercial voltage output from a commercial power supply is rectified by the rectifier section. The rectified voltage is boosted to any desired voltage, and then smoothed, by the power factor correction section so as to have its power factor corrected. After the power factor has been corrected, the voltage is supplied to the power converter section, which generates an AC power to drive a motor using the voltage that had had its power factor corrected, and outputs the power to the motor.